The Enterprise Blog

Author Archive

Edward Blum

How Eric Holder Blocks the Will of Voters

By Edward Blum

June 2, 2010, 4:17 pm

eric-holderAccording to today’s Wall Street Journal, this fall, voters in New York City may have another opportunity to vote for the elimination of partisan primary elections, a cause long championed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. An earlier attempt in 2003 was unsuccessful, with only 30 percent of voters supporting the idea even though Bloomberg chipped in nearly $8 million of his own fortune to help pass it.

Yet, even if the proposal goes to the voters and they approve it, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) may veto the change—basically overturning the will and wisdom of the voters.

How could that happen? Well, the law permits it: Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act—the provision that requires all changes to election procedures and polices be preapproved by the attorney general or the federal courts in Washington before they go into effect—covers Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. These three boroughs (but not Queens and Staten Island), in addition to nine states mostly in the Deep South, are still subject to this Jim Crow-era requirement which Congress mistakenly refused to update when the act was renewed in 2006.

So, if Washington, D.C., thinks the idea of eliminating party labels from citywide elections will “retrogress” the opportunity of New York’s minority voters to elect a candidate of their choice, it can cancel the outcome of the election.

And that’s exactly what Attorney General Eric Holder did a few months ago in Kinston, North Carolina—a town in which 64 percent of registered voters are African-American. By a 2-to-1 margin, Kinston voters approved switching to nonpartisan city elections, yet DOJ objected, arguing that under a nonpartisan system white Democrats would no longer vote for African-American candidates if those candidates weren’t affiliated with the Democratic Party.

Until Section 5 is struck down as unconstitutional—and there are two lawsuits working through the courts now that aim to do that—DOJ will be able to thwart the will of the voters attempting to change and improve their local forms of governance.

Image by ryanjreilly.

Email to Author   |   Permalink   |   Comments Off
Categories:  Law and the Constitution   |   Tags:

Edward Blum

‘Hispanic’ District Won by an African-American

By Edward Blum

May 11, 2010, 7:19 am

Last Saturday, the City of Irving, Texas held its first city council elections using a new form of governance that was mandated by a federal court in 2009. The outcome of that election is dripping with irony. Here’s why.

Readers may recall that Hispanic activists successfully sued Irving under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, arguing that the city’s century-old system of electing council members from at-large, city-wide districts discriminated against Hispanics because no Hispanic had ever won a seat on the council.

To settle the lawsuit, Irving was forced to create six single-member voting districts—one of which was heavily gerrymandered to ensure the election of a Hispanic—and two at-large ones.

The election results are in and the folks at the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund must be having a bad day. The newly created “Hispanic” district was won by an African American (who defeated a Hispanic), while the one at-large contest was won by … yep, a Hispanic (who defeated a white candidate).

During the last 20 years, the Voting Rights Act has been badly misused by left-leaning advocacy groups and the Department of Justice to further election systems and gerrymandered voting districts that will produce racial and ethnic proportionality in our legislative bodies. Irving’s election results prove again that voters increasingly don’t care much about a candidate’s skin color or heritage. It’s time for the courts to stop forcing these racial election schemes on the voters.

Email to Author   |   Permalink   |   Comments Off
Categories:  Law and the Constitution, Politics and Public Opinion   |   Tags:

Edward Blum

Message to Republican Lawmakers: Hold Your Ground

By Edward Blum

June 22, 2009, 11:26 am

During the next few days, the U.S. Supreme Court will issue its opinion in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder, a challenge to the constitutionality of the recently reauthorized Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Section 5 requires mostly southern jurisdictions to ask permission from the federal government before any new election procedure (redistricting, moving a polling place, etc.) can go into effect.

Although this “preclearance” provision was an important element of the 1965 statute, lawmakers scheduled it to expire in 1970, recognizing that it was a serious assault on bedrock American federalism principles. But expiration never happened. In fact, the provision was extended three more times with President George W. Bush enthusiastically signing the fourth reauthorization in an elaborate White House ceremony on July 28, 2006. The bill had won approval in the Senate by a margin of 98-0 and in the House by a margin of 390-33. One week later, the Austin MUD filed its lawsuit.

If the high court finds this provision of the VRA unconstitutional, the howls of outrage from Congress will be deafening. Already warning shots have been fired across the bow of the Supreme Court from Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy and his newest Democratic member, Sen. Arlen Specter.

Republican lawmakers don’t have many battle scars from their defense of color-blind equal protection, so it won’t be surprising to see them duck and cover if the MUD wins. But this would be unwise. Republicans (and any Democrats willing to stand up) need to acknowledge that the reauthorization was problematic and, frankly, disingenuous from the beginning.

Republicans need to lead on this, not just play defense. Here’s how.

First, Republicans should insist that if Congress chooses to pass a new voting preclearance provision, every jurisdiction in the nation must be considered for coverage—not just the ones targeted in 1965. And second, coverage should not be applied anywhere unless there is demonstrable evidence of recent, intentional governmental discrimination against minorities that existing laws cannot remedy. Of course, if Section 5 is struck down, the court’s opinion will probably highlight these exact defects, so it shouldn’t be a bridge too far for Republican lawmakers to stand their ground on these principles.

Email to Author   |   Permalink   |   Comments Off
Categories:  Law and the Constitution, Supreme Court   |   Tags:

Edward Blum

Demagoguery and the Voting Rights Act

By Edward Blum

June 15, 2009, 9:40 am

Right on cue, the NY Times enters stage left to deliver a grim dirge on the necessity of maintaining Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act exactly as it was in 1965, the year of its inception. The U.S. Supreme Court will issue an opinion on the provision’s constitutionality later this month.

For weeks leading up to the oral argument in the case, the Gray Lady and the other members of this choir sang full-throated allegro con brio how in 2008 President Obama had underperformed among white voters in the mostly southern states covered by the provision and this was evidence of its indispensability. That error was debunked here. In any event, the justices didn’t even take note of it during the oral argument.

After oral argument though, most Court observers believe that the justices, including Justice Kennedy, have enough doubts about the fairness of Section 5 that it may be struck down.

So the choir has picked up their guitars and started wailing out protest songs à la Woody Guthrie about the injustices of “judicial activism” and the imminent return of Jim Crow. According to this argument in The Hill:

At one level, it would determine whether today’s Supreme Court considers itself first among equals by overruling a near-unanimous mandate of Congress. At another, it would signal a return to the court’s little-known and shameful record of the late 19th century of providing for and sanctioning the path of Jim Crow. It would put the Roberts Court on a trail comparable to that of such luminaries a century ago as Chief Justices Morrison Waite and Melville Fuller. They presided over a Supreme Court that authorized both rigid racial segregation and disfranchisement that left African Americans in the South as legally inferior citizens without protection of the law.

So, if the provision is found unconstitutional, this puts the Roberts Court on a course to allow the states to begin anew racial segregation and disenfranchisement? This is demagoguery, and intellectually lazy demagoguery to boot. A handful of preeminent, left-leaning legal scholars warned Congress to modernize Section 5 or face the likelihood of it being declared unconstitutional. Congress ignored their warnings and punted the issue to the Court.

Congress will probably take another bite at the Section 5 apple if the current one is set aside. Let’s hope the debate doesn’t devolve into this kind of nonsense.

Email to Author   |   Permalink   |   Comments Off
Categories:  Law and the Constitution, Politics and Public Opinion, Supreme Court   |   Tags:

Edward Blum

Mississippi Turning

By Edward Blum

May 22, 2009, 2:46 pm

For the Supreme Court justices who still cling to the belief that racial attitudes in the Deep South have not changed enough to warrant striking down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, now comes James A. Young, the newly elected mayor of Philadelphia, Mississippi to challenge that idea.missamflag

Young, a Pentecostal minister and retired four-term county supervisor who managed the county’s ambulance service for almost 20 years, is black. He defeated Rayburn Wadell, who is white. The city is 56 percent white.

What makes this election so remarkable is that Philadelphia, Mississippi was the scene of one of the most horrific slayings of the Jim Crow-era in the Deep South. As reported in the New York Times:

On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers who were registering voters in Philadelphia—James Chaney, who was black, and Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who were white—were murdered.

In a 1967 trial, seven of 18 defendants were convicted of conspiracy. Then in 2005, Edgar Ray Killen, an 80-year-old former Klansman, was convicted of manslaughter for the killings and sentenced to 60 years in prison.

University of Oklahoma political scientist Keith Gaddie did a quick analysis of the election and concludes that Young polled, at a minimum, about a fifth of the white vote, which is nearly double the white vote there for Barack Obama in 2008.

By now, this is an old story: throughout the South, black and Hispanic candidates increasingly are winning the majority of white voters. Last year, for instance, Eric Powell, an African-American Democrat, was elected to the Mississippi State Senate from a district that is over 92 percent white.

All of which goes to central question before the Supreme Court about Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (which requires Mississippi and eight other mostly southern states to get permission from the federal government before enacting any election changes): has the 1965 era apparatus to disenfranchise blacks come to an end? The evidence from Mississippi indicates it has.

Email to Author   |   Permalink   |   Comments Off
Categories:  Politics and Public Opinion, Society and Culture   |   Tags:

The American Enterprise Institute takes no institutional positions on policy advocacy or political campaigns. The views expressed on The Enterprise Blog represent those of the individual writers.

AEI